So Shall You Reap


 
 
 
 
 
 Also by Donna Leon
 Death at La Fenice
 Death in a Strange Country
 Dressed for Death
 Death and Judgment
 Acqua Alta
 Quietly in Their Sleep
 A Noble Radiance
 Fatal Remedies
 Friends in High Places
 A Sea of Troubles
 Willful Behavior
 Uniform Justice
 Doctored Evidence
 Blood from a Stone
 Through a Glass, Darkly
 Suffer the Little Children
 The Girl of His Dreams
 About Face
 A Question of Belief
 Drawing Conclusions
 Handel’s Bestiary
 Beastly Things
 Venetian Curiosities
 The Jewels of Paradise
 The Golden Egg
 My Venice and Other Essays
 By its Cover
 Gondola
 Falling in Love
 The Waters of Eternal Youth
 Earthly Remains
 The Temptation of Forgiveness
 Unto Us a Son Is Given
 Trace Elements
 Transient Desires
 Give unto Others
 
 
 Donna Leon
 So Shall You Reap
 
 Atlantic Monthly Press
 New York
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag
 Endpaper map © Martin Lubikowski, ML Design, London
 Jacket photograph © Vyacheslav Lopatin/Alamy
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
 Originally published in Great Britain in 2023 by Hutchinson Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
 Published simultaneously in Canada
 First Grove Atlantic edition: March 2023
 Typeset in 12/16.45 pt Palatino LT Std by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
 ISBN 978-0-8021-6236-6
 eISBN 978-0-8021-6237-3
 Atlantic Monthly Press
 an imprint of Grove Atlantic
 154 West 14th Street
 New York, NY 10011
 Distributed by Publishers Group West
 groveatlantic.com
 
 
 For Cecily and Johannes Trapp
 
 
 Oh, fatal consequence
 Of rage, by reason uncontroll’d!
 With every law he can dispense;
 No ties the furious monster hold:
 From crime to crime he blindly goes,
 Nor end, but with his own destruction knows.
 Saul Act II, 68Handel
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1
 
 On a Saturday in early November, Guido Brunetti, reluctant to go outside, was at home, trying to decide which of his books to remove from the shelves in Paola’s study. Years ago, some months before the birth of their daughter, he had renounced claim to what had been his study so that their second child could have her own bedroom. Paola had offered his books sanctuary on four shelves. At the time, Brunetti had suspected this would not suffice, and eventually it had not: the time had come for The Cull. He was faced with the decision of what to eliminate from the shelves. The first shelf held books he knew he would read again; the second, at eye level, held books he wanted to read for the first time; the third, books he’d not finished but believed he would; and the bottom shelf held books he had known, sometimes even as he was buying them, that he would never read.
 He decided to begin with the books at the bottom. He knelt on one knee and studied the spines. Halfway along, he saw the familiar face of Proust, and the face of Proust, and the face of Proust. Slipping his hands into the space before the first book and after the last, he said aloud, ‘Now,’ and extracted them in one block. He stood and carried them over to Paola’s desk, tilted his hands, and set them down in a wobbly pile, then patted them into order. He stepped back and counted the faces of Proust: seven.
 He went to the kitchen and returned with one of the paper bags the city distributed to hold paper for collection. He opened it and lowered the Prousts carefully inside, then returned to the shelf, carrying the bag. He set it beside him, knelt again, and glanced more carefully at the remaining books, making a series of visceral judgements, adding the books to the bag without bothering to give them the opportunity to plead for their lives from the temporary safety of Paola’s desk. Moby Dick; The Man of Feeling; I Promessi Sposi, which he’d been forced to read as a student in liceo and had hated. It had survived this long because, until now, he’d lacked the courage to believe a ‘classic’ could be such a bore, but into the bag it went. He came to four volumes of D’Annunzio’s plays and poetry and knew instantly that they were for the bag: was it because he was a bad writer or a bad person? To settle it, he opened one of the books of poetry at random and read the first line of the first poem his eye fell upon. ‘Voglio un amore doloroso, lento …’
 Brunetti’s hand, still holding the book, fell to his side. ‘You want a love that’s painful and slow, do you?’ he asked the deceased poet. ‘How about fast and painless?’ He bent and picked up the sixteen centimetres of D’Annunzio and tucked them in beside Manzoni. ‘If ever a marriage was